


the magic in the music

by agentmaine



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, canon adjacent?, this is just duck and music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmaine/pseuds/agentmaine
Summary: Duck Newton loves music. Duck Newton loves his family. Duck's mom always told him it was good to share.-OR, i wanted to write some amnesty fluff, this is just three mini-scenes of duck sharing his love of music with his favourite people.
Relationships: Indrid Cold/Duck Newton
Comments: 10
Kudos: 62





	the magic in the music

When people look at Duck, their first thought isn’t  _ musician _ . Rightfully so, because he’s not one, not properly, anyway. But he  _ is  _ a music-lover, almost as much as he loves nature, and that’s a side of him that is recognised a lot less, quite simply because, well, there have been more pressing issues than having people ask him what he does in his spare time. Regardless, music is something that is important to Duck Newton. The rhythm and the melody and the simple distraction of it all has done a lot for him.

Music is one of the things in life that isn’t ever taken away. Duck has found through trials and tribulations (both old and new) that music manages to fit in through the cracks, even when you’re too busy or tired to even think about picking up a book or watching a film. Music in his ears, played through shitty, fake iPhone earphones he bought off ebay can take him out of where he is, put him somewhere new, relax him. Music is just  _ good _ , it makes him feel good, makes most people feel good and sure, he doesn’t have much in the way of popstar potential, but he’s got a half-decent voice and knows his way around a guitar and that’s enough for him.

Music is something that is inescapable, too. It fits in his life and because of that, if you know Duck Newton, you know music. You don’t get much of a choice in the matter. His mama would always say it’s good to share, and that’s what he’ll do - share his song, whether on purpose or by accident, whether it’s wanted or not.

***

The sun shines golden in Kepler, West Virginia on a pleasant enough proportion of the mornings. It cracks through people’s blinds and sunlight streams in like liquid gold, warming the world before most people are up and out of bed, allowing them to start their days in the glow of the morning light. Most people are asleep when this happens, when the sky transitions from the black of night to a gradient of colours painting the sky towards daytime.

Duck Newton isn’t most people.

Working as a forest ranger means early mornings and Duck has never been one for them, personally, but he loves the work and the sky turning from black to gold to blue makes it a bit easier. Still, though, it would be impossible for him to pull himself from his bed without his one true timekeeper: not his alarm, which he’d happily turn off 50 times over to silence the damned beeping, but  _ music.  _ Duck has always used it to time himself, choosing songs above minutes - it takes five songs for a quick morning routine, it takes 10 songs to get to work, it has to take less than 20 to do his chores, all that sort of stuff. It’s less daunting that way, more of a challenge, and, well, just a bit more  _ fun _ .

So, for Duck Newton, mornings of gold are accompanied by the only thing that seems fitting: a voice of gold. And, yes,  _ of course  _ he’s talking about Dolly Parton.

Every morning after the first ring of his alarm, he shoves on the only song a man on a mission can listen to - 9 to 5. Because, hell, he’s in his late thirties and shit, sometimes it  _ is  _ all takin’ and no givin’, and a man needs a bit of joy on a morning as he listens to the wise old words of Ms. Parton herself, pouring himself the first of many cups of ambition he’ll have throughout the day. His cat likes it, too, he’s sure of it, if the circling around his legs is anything to go by.

Or maybe that’s just her wanting to be fed.

Either way, for the past however many years, this has been a significant part of his morning routine, something that starts the day off on an upswing and sets the precedent for the hours to follow. This was never a problem, always a pick-me-up and let him put his guard down. It fit into his mornings the same way brushing his teeth and putting his uniform did. Good, right?

Well, no. Not when all of a sudden Duck is no longer living alone. Everything that happens  _ happens _ and happens hard, and he’s not evil, so of course he takes people in. Aubrey and Minerva alternate between the spare room and the couch, trying to make the suddenly cramped apartment as much of a home as they can, between the three of them. Duck encourages Aubrey to put her posters up, not that he recognises a face on them, encourages Minerva to buy literally anything she wants to maybe make life Earthside patched with a bit more normality. Sure, a potted plant or seven won’t fix the  _ everything  _ going on, but Duck is a forest ranger, not a therapist, and he’s sure he read somewhere they’re meant to help.

They look nice, at least.

To put it simply, it’s something of an adjustment. The space he has shrinks, the shopping list triples and suddenly there’s eyes on him that aren’t his own or his cat’s. It’s strange, although not necessarily bad. They’re his girls, he supposes, the pseudo-sisters he somehow has, now, fitted in alongside knowledge of cryptids and Sylvain and a million and one other things he can’t think about for too long without getting a migraine. In spite of that, or maybe because of it, Duck tries to forge a new normal out of the wreckage of his old life, from those long-forgotten before times that must have been painfully quiet, now that he thinks about it.

The thing about routine, though, is the fact that when you perfect it, it can be something hard to step out of. Routine that turns to habit can really dig its claws into your life, until it's something akin to breathing. Duck would argue to the others that you can’t just  _ stop  _ all you know, especially when what you know is something you know unknowingly. And, what Duck Newton sadly means by that long winded argument is something that can be summarised in much simpler terms, as it was when it happened:

“Shit, have I woken y’all up again? Christ, I didn’t even realise I was singing, I am  _ so  _ sorry.”

“ _ Duuuuuuck _ ,” came the response from Aubrey, and he wasn’t sure if she was squinting at him or glaring. “Yes, you woke us up. You can’t expect to  _ not  _ wake us up when it’s fuckin’ 7 in the morning and you’re auditioning for the 9 to 5 musical!”

“I think I’d make a good broadway babe.” He replied with a smile, his laugher  _ just  _ about kept back behind the words.

“I hate you.” Aubrey had shot back, but she was smiling, and then she was sitting up with a huge stretch and fixing her eyes on Duck again. “If you woke me up with the first verse, you should know I’m not letting you get away with it without singing the rest.”

He stared at her.

She stared right back.

“Get singing, Ducholas. You heard me!” She repeated. “That’s a threat!”

“Jesus, Aubs,” he laughed, rolling his eyes and proceeding into the kitchen. “Whatever.”

Out of eyesight, though, he had started to continue his song. And soon, despite himself, he was singing full volume again, sliding in fluffy socks across wooden floors as Aubrey applauded for him, giggles erupting from the girl as the performance grew in volume and style and soon Minerva was stood in her door frame, almost as tall as it, herself, watching as he sang another chorus into a ladle grabbed haphazardly from the kitchen. Aubrey had joined in as well, by the end, her voice matching his in a way that could almost be called pleasant, Minerva accompanying only though her laughter as she watched them, amused and endeared and  _ happy _ , as they all were, and it felt  _ nice _ .

And, really, who could blame them when it’s that catchy of a Dolly Parton song?

Maybe more important, though, was the sense of warmth that stayed with Duck in the days after. Maybe more important was the increased frequency of Duck singing in his - no,  _ their _ home, most of the time more to get a laugh out of the women living with him than for his own enjoyment, because really, he doesn’t  _ want  _ to sing into a soup spoon. Maybe more important than that was that he got enough joy out of their smiles that, yeah, it was good to make a fool of himself once in a while.

Even if it meant learning some of those Fall Out Boy songs Aubrey loved so much.

Music breaks through the cracks, breaks into routine, breaks into homes and Duck supposes, breaks into hearts, if the smile it made Aubrey wear was anything to go by.

***

When Amnesty Lodge had organised a karaoke night after Aubrey found a cheap machine on ebay, Duck was promised time and time again it was not a scheme to get him to sing in front of people.

This, of course, was a huge fucking lie. But, unlike Duck himself, his friends were physically capable of making those.

The night of the plan arrived, a break for all of them, a time of light and laughter and drink and distraction amongst everything else. The lodge was bustling with friendly faces, the largest table packed full of snack food prepared by Barclay, and the second largest full of drinks prepared by Mama and Aubrey and so what if Aubrey had added at least an extra 50% of spirit to each cocktail recipe she found? The more the merrier has always been the case. They’d put effort into this, into creating a stupid reason to be joyful, with Dani having helped Aubrey pin up countless fairy lights that changed colour like a disco from the 80s. The karaoke machine had been worked on tirelessly to make it functional and Mama had dug out an old projector, quite literally having to dust decades of cobwebs off it to set it up so it could project lyrics onto a wall. The food was delicious, the selection of music practically impeccable, and for once, it was something  _ normal _ .

People mingled happily and of course, the karaoke was an immediate hit, although definitely with some more than others. Aubrey, sober as a rock, dragged Dani into a duet of Summer Love from Grease, leading Mama to catch Duck’s eyes with a knowing smirk. Barclay, somewhat less sober, managed to convince a stiff-as-a-board Stern up to their fake stage, too, the agent dressed in formalwear and stood with eyes wide like a deer in the middle of the road, shaking his head side to side in a miniscule signal of  _ get me the fuck out of here _ .

“Come on, Stern!” Aubrey called from the snack table, immediately echoed by a shocked snort of laughter from Dani. “Don’t be a narc, or I’ll get a chant started!”

Barclay looked at the man, shrugged, told the DJ (or, well, Jake,) to press play and soon the two of them were in the middle of an Islands In The Stream duet that wasn’t… good. It wasn’t good, but it could have been worse, and they got one hell of an applause afterwards.

The night passed in that same way, with solo after solo and duet after duet and drink after drink, until the machinations of Aubrey’s brilliant mind and Duck, much older than he was in college and none the wiser, was spotted talking to resident DJ Coolice.

Indrid, through no manner of coincidence, arrived at the party at just that time, skulking in towards the back of the room as if he were a shadow, trying to keep out of the way of people much drunker than him, and trying harder still to avoid garnering any real attention. This succeeded, for the most part, until Aubrey caught him with a sharp elbow to the side.

“I  _ knew  _ you’d show up for Duck’s big moment.” She grinned at him, eyes shining bright and not from Sylvain.

“ _ Knowing  _ is usually my field, Aubrey, but yes. You were right, clearly.” He replied coyly, a smug smirk playing on his lips. “I knew he’d be singing and, well, I figured it wasn’t a show to miss.”

“You  _ need  _ to tell me what he’s gonna sing. Come on. I need to be prepared or I’ll die.” She pleaded.

“You’re not going to die, I can promise you that. I’d have warned you five minutes ago if that were the case.” Aubrey snorted a laugh in response but didn’t relent, raising her eyebrows at him expectedly. “You really want to ruin the surprise?”

“God, like a fuckin’ kid on Christmas,  _ yeah  _ I do.”

“How familiar are you with Avril Lavigne, Aubrey?” Indrid’s response came cool and smooth like butter, but the smile at his lips was harder to fight back each second he looked at Aubrey’s gobsmacked face through his round, red glasses.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Am I?”

“I mean, shit, you have to be. You know him well,  _ duh,”  _ and Indrid wasn’t stupid enough to miss the implication, there, “but come on. Avril Lavigne?”

Indrid only chuckled, shrugging loosely and nodding towards the stage. “Take a look for yourself, my friend.”

Indrid was right, of course. He is, most of the time, for reasons obvious. But he was  _ spectacularly  _ right that night, because what Duck came out with was  _ truly  _ a surprise. Aubrey knowing it was to be a tribute to Avril Lavigne in no way prepared her for the passionate rendition of Girlfriend by the aforementioned popstar, a performance that nobody in the room could have expected in their wildest dreams, because… it was forest ranger Duck Newton, not a 15 year old pining for the most popular guy in school.

Though, if Duck pointing at a certain someone in the room once he made eye contact with red lenses was anything to go by, it could be said that the performance was at least somewhat inspired by real-life emotion.

That wasn’t what was focused on, though. Instead, it was the laughter echoing in the room, every person reduced to near tears at their friend on stage, Duck himself struggling to form words around the laughter as his face scrunched up with the force of the smile on his lips, his clumsy footwork only exacerbating it all. Even after the performance had reached its end, after the applause had died down, the laughter failed to truly dissipate, each singular giggle from someone somewhere in the room rippling like a tidal wave of pure, simple happiness.

“I can’t… I can’t fuckin believe I just did that, Mama.” Duck had said to the woman after his performance, chugging down a much needed iced water rather than another drink.

“That, buddy, sure is one for the history books.” She chuckled, slapping a firm hand onto his shoulder in approval and nodding at him. “Thanks for that, Duck. Cheered people right up.”

“Pft, nah, ‘s just dumb.” Duck had rolled his eyes back at her, the bravado of performance gone as some normal water replaced the liquid courage and adrenaline that had fuelled him before.

“Nah, it’s not stupid.” Mama replied, surprisingly soberly. She stopped, surveyed the room. "Smiles like this are never dumb, Duck, even if what - or  _ who  _ \- brought them about is.”

She was right about that, too.

***

Duck had always been a solo performer, apart from his courageous outburst at the Lodge party and his sing-songing with his new family. That was all  _ stupid _ , and it was fun, but it was stupid fun. It wasn’t…  _ jamming _ , is what he’d have called it in high school. He did that a lot, then, took his guitar to his room and would play and sing for hours on end. He did it until he adapted to the live-in situation he found himself in, and then he couldn’t.

Until Indrid had suggested playing music with  _ him _ .

His winnebago is quiet and separated from the rest of the town, and Duck had already been spending significant amounts of time there. At first, it was simply to do with getting information, and ideally to do with getting it with a bit more warning than having 5 minutes to save a store full of people. But things that are meant to be  _ one simple thing _ always morph into two, then three, and then he’s looking for excuses to drop round after work, and then Indrid was calling him more often, just to tell him he was about to stub his toe and then talk for an hour or so after, and then... things moved, in a way originally unexpected.

Well, as with all things, it was one thing until it wasn’t. And, in their case, it looped right back around the way from one simple thing into just one  _ good  _ one - a  _ them _ , an  _ us. _

And if Indrid were kind enough to offer a space for Duck to play music, even if it wasn’t necessarily solo, who would he be to turn it down?

Sat outside Indrid’s winnebago on unmatching shitty, uncomfortable plastic chairs, with drinks resting on a dangerously wobbly table, in front of a campfire that Duck has to bite back the urge to caution about - somehow, that becomes Duck’s favourite place to play music. When it’s dark, they’ll sit there together, illuminated only by the glow of the fire and a flickering lamp above, and Duck will sing song after song after song as Indrid plays guessing games over which he’ll choose next and, of course, he’s usually right.

Duck will sit and strum at the guitar absentmindedly as Indrid chats about his day, or he’ll play  _ properly _ , letting himself sing whatever he wants, be it Phil Collins or freakin’ Madonna, lets himself forget about the idea of being watched in a way that unsettles him, finds himself instead enjoying the attention. Indrid never sings along, says he’s not got the voice for it, but watches intently, leaning forward as if he’s admiring a piece of art in a portrait gallery, searching for finer detail.

In between songs, they’ll chat, holding hands across the table, fingers interlocked tight. And it feels good in a way performing never usually does, feels intimate, feels… special, Duck supposes, which is weird, considering it was supposedly a hobby he picked up to avoid homework way back when.

On a warmer evening, once, the two had settled on the floor rather than the chairs, comfortable on the grass below them as Indrid practically basked in the golden sun, the glow of the closing of days, low and soft and gentle, rather than the one that signals the starting of a new morning. Duck had just finished strumming at a song, quiet and instrumental and beautiful, really, one he’d known for years and never quite figured where he’d picked it up from. Indrid had drifted off into it, as if on a cloud, or at least having his head taken away with them.

Duck smiled as he put his guitar to the side, watching Indrid in peace for a moment, admiring the curve of his jaw, the bright white hair shifted out of style by the breeze, the arms keeping him upright, the oversized shirt he wore and all of it, as much as he could.

“You’re staring, Duck.” Indrid’s voice broke the silence and it was as welcome of a sound as the music had been.

“Hey, sue me.” Duck chuckled, moving himself closer to Indrid’s side. “Ain’t a guy allowed to admire his… boyfriend? Not boyfriend, fuck, past 30 you’re too old to have a  _ boyfriend _ . Partner? Is this a partner thing?”

“Are we cowboys?” The reply came coldly but with not one hint of real bite to it, that fact solidified by Indrid moving as if on instinct into Duck’s side, pressing himself there as an arm wrapped around him.

“I mean, no, not really, but… what’s a cowboy but a forest ranger of the desert? Ever think of it like that?” Duck raised his eyebrows at the man, as if to punctuate his sentence with a point.

“No, I haven’t, actually.” Indrid feigned thoughtfulness as he reached to press a kiss to the stubble on Duck’s cheek, a smile against his skin as he moved back. “Because you’re wrong, is why, in case you didn’t get the message.”

“Loud and clear, Indrid, thanks for the support.” Duck chuckled again, dipping his head to kiss soft and sweet Indrid and he still wasn’t rid of the butterflies that came with that, like a first date one thousand times over. He knew he was flushed when he moved back, but so was Indrid, and that made it okay. “Crowd’s not as tough as it pretends to be.”

“If  _ I  _ am the crowd, I’ve never once pretended to be tough.” Another kiss pressed onto his lips then and Duck smiled to it, a teenager all over again. “I just have standards, Duck. Which is why I appreciate your musical abilities more so than your comedic ones.”

Duck placed his free hand over his heart, inhaled a gasp with wide eyes. “Low blow there, Indy, I think I’m funny! Dad joke funny is still funny!”

“Hm,” came the response, Indrid moving swiftly onwards with a soft smile on his face. “If we save the comedy routine for another day, how do you feel about singing another song?”

“Aw, want me to serenade you?” A beat. “Wait, for real?”

Indrid laughed, then, lilting and jovial and fond. “Yes,  _ for real _ ,” he mimicked. “If you would, Duck. It’s… very calming, actually. I didn’t originally suggest your  _ jamming  _ sessions fully out of the goodness of my heart - I can be selfish too, sometimes.”

“Jeez, if the world held your idea of selfishness, we’d all be in harmony by now.” Duck smiled and pressed a kiss to the side of Indrid’s head, breathing him in for a moment. “But, yeah, sure, ‘course I’ll sing for you.”

Indrid smiled at that, dazzling and bright like the flash of a shooting star, moving himself from Duck’s side, pressing a soft kiss to his lips and quickly readjusting his head into Duck’s lap in one swift motion, as if he’d planned for it and, well, Duck realised, he probably saw this coming. Duck carded a hand through Indrid’s soft, white hair, it gentle against his own hands, calloused from years of work, and stared up at the shifting clouds for a moment.

“Sing the second song you’re thinking of.” Indrid mumbled from his position, practically purring at the hand in his hair.

“Second -- wait,  _ you’ve got a friend in me? _ Hey, something you wanna tell me, smart ass?” Duck questioned.

“ _ No,  _ I just like the song.” Indrid laughed again, sighing. “Drama queen.”

“Says you, Mr. Mystery Caller.” They laughed in unison, Indrid grabbing Duck’s spare hand and holding it close, his thumb rubbing across it as Duck began to sing, low and shaky and a bit uncertain, at first, like a toddler’s first steps. Indrid melted into it.

And, maybe, out of everything, that’s what music is. A place to fall into, be carried away with. A moment of laughter, of peace, of separation from everything bad.

Duck  _ was  _ a solo performer, but like his mama said - it’s always good to share.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a silly lil fluffy thing and YES i chose the song girlfriend because of the audio of justin mcelroy himself singing it


End file.
